THE DIGITAL SOCIAL BRAIN: NEUROSCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVES ON INTERACTION AND IDENTITY

These chapters analyze how the transition from face-to-face interaction to algorithm-driven digital environments is reshaping human psychology, biology, and society. Digital communication strips away rich social cues, promotes curated identities, and replaces communal belonging with metric-based validation, increasing cognitive load, stress, social comparison, and identity conflict. Platforms deliberately exploit reward and threat systems through unpredictable feedback, emotional amplification, and personalized feeds, fostering compulsive use, attentional fragmentation, emotional reactivity, and reduced empathy and executive control. Chronic digital stress disrupts neural regulation, dopamine signaling, the HPA axis, autonomic balance, sleep, metabolism, and cardiovascular function, contributing to anxiety, depression, inflammation, and long-term disease risk. Psychophysiological evidence from EEG, HRV, cortisol, and neuroimaging demonstrates weakened prefrontal control, altered reward sensitivity, and persistent sympathetic activation.

Pagina's: 116, Paperback, LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing